Becoming an IDA user

Who can use IDA? The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture offers Finnish universities and projects and researchers of the Academy of Finland storage in IDA. The storage quota is assigned to the universities with the agreed principles and indicators defined by the Ministry.

Universities and Academy of Finland grant IDA quota for their projects. IDA access and size of storage quota is approved by the IDA contact person at each organization. You may contact them for further information on the use of IDA in your organization.

Projects and researchers funded by the Academy of Finland are entitled to use IDA and receive by default a storage space of 2TB when submitting an application.

Universities of applied sciences are also eligible to use IDA. Please contact the IDA coordinator (idakoordinaattori (at) csc.fi) for further information. The Ministry grants also additional IDA capacity to projects requiring a large amount of storage capacity, such as ESFRI projects.

What kind of data is IDA for? IDA is intended for the storage of research data. Both raw data and analyzed result data from projects may be stored in the service. The data may be published or not.

The service is not optimized for data under heavy usage (e.g. computing disk data, data used in web applications) or constantly changing data (e.g. daily data backup). The service is not suitable for storing sensitive personal data or biometric identifiers.

Make sure that IDA service suits your needs. The data you preserve in IDA should be

Apply for IDA storage space with an application form in SUI (go to eService, followed by Resources and Applications, choose Storage from the Resources menu, followed by IDA Storage Service). You will receive an e-mail confirmation once the application has been dealt with.

Take your IDA storage space into use by following the instructions given in the e-mail!

Add users to existing IDA storage space

The project's Principal Investigator can add users to the IDA storage space in the Scientist's User Interface (SUI).

Choose the project from the My Projects view. Choose Edit Project on the right hand side on the bottom of the page.

Add a user by filling in the user's e-mail address in the field View Members.

The invited user approves the Terms of use of the IDA service in the Approvals view. In case the Confirm-button is not visible, please refresh the page. The user will receive an e-mail confirmation once the user has been added to the project.

Finnish higher education institutes can grant IDA storage for actors of the Finnish research system. IDA Storage Service Terms of Use must be met. IDA Storage Service Terms of Use include General Terms of Use for CSC's Services for Science.

IDA project leader shall always be able to identify the legal owner of the data stored in the service. Project user terms of use include committing to describing the stored data.

IDA is a continuous service, in which the data is stored according to the terms of use for the time being, or until the data is transferred elsewhere or to longer-term storage.

The usage of the granted IDA quota can be monitored by the quota granter, so that unused storage space can be reallocated if necessary. Violating the terms use can lead to removal of IDA access rights.

In addition to the above mentioned application process, projects in need of larger storage capacities can apply for additional storage quota. Projects in need of exceptionally large storage capacities, e.g. ESFRI projects, can apply for IDA storage quota via this separate call. The Ministry of Education and Culture makes the final grant decisions.

Additional storage quota can be applied for twice a year by filling in an application form and sending it to lisaosuus (at) postit.csc.fi. The granted additional storage capacities is public information, so please attach also a public abstract to your application.

For more information about the call for additional storage quota, please contact lisaosuus (at) postit.csc.fi.